New literacy

While literacy has always had a “reading-writing” connotation for me, technological changes are adding many more layers and depth to the meaning of the term literacy. Literacy can and should now be taken in a much broader sense. I can be literate in the sense that I can read and write, but illerate, or at a low level of literacy in terms of social media proficiency. Or, for the learner who has never met with much success iin the more traditional definitions of literacy, this might allow his proficiency in technology, website designing for example, to be taken into account when assessing his “literacy”.

In other words, with the advent of so many more ways to communicate, literacy is now a much broader topic. It allows for the inclusion of the myriad of new technologies, be they social network related, web based design focussed, or any number of newly available presentation tools and devices. The advent of emerging technologies makes for many more possibilities of demonstratioting literacy (or lack thereof).